The dark second mate
Under the city of Osimo there is an incredible dark second mate.
An underworld which links the main buildings, like Palace Campana, Riccioni, Simonetti and Gallo , expanding throughout the city in a maze

Palace Gallo (surface)

Palace Campana (surface)

This place, full of ancient alchemical symbolism, of which has not yet been given an explanation about its creation and on the respective function, was certainly sailed and lived by the Knights Templar of Malta who used it for their initiation to the Order.
After all, the symbolism of the labyrinth has always been considered the main element for the journey into the darkness of primal chaos toward the light, from a mere mortal and confused soul to an immortal and “enlightened” one. No coincidence that the path was done in an underground place; we must fight and defeat the dark before finding the exit to the light

Cave of P.zza Dante

More over this dark area is populated by strange statues of pagan gods such as Mithras and Dionysus, fantasy monsters and symbols to be interpreted. A real initiation stage where only a real adept culturally and spiritually well prepared, could be overcome, otherwise he would have found the eternal darkness.
Osimo, a town built in tuff, a material easy to dug and shaped, was a great place to secretly build a testing ground for those who wanted to join the order of the Knights Templar . Who ever would say, going to Osimo and walking through the noisy streets, that under their feet there is an identical street, dark, silent, deep, where perhaps a lost soul is intent on solving a mysterious puzzles to reach the coveted eternal light?

Cave Galliani

It has been carried out a census of 88 caves and niches that extend for over 9000 meters. Almost all have a disposal at "double comb", that are symmetrical with niches built opposite each other. These galleries are also at different levels in some cases linked to each other by wells, most of which are now without water. There are also a dozen of more ancient narrow tunnels which would drop from five to fifteen meters. The wells would be a hundred with a diameter of 90 cm which were used for water keeping but also to allow air and light to pass.

Cave Buglioni

The height of 2.50 meters and width of 140 cm is common to all the galleries, which ensure that all the caves were created by a single project. It is no doubt that the underground tunnels in the past were used to escape, for food storage or for the removal of materials or moreover for the same water flow. But they can not have been created just for this. Apart from the statues that remain mysterious, they were also empty, therefore their function had to be another. Too particularly their complexity, their plots are too strange. What were they used for? Why were they created? What have been seen by their walls? This is the great mystery of Osimo up to today.

Cave SimonettiCaves are connected to Palazzo Simonetti, building that belonged to the family Sinibaldi in the twelfth century. It was a very powerful Guelph family with privileges coming directly from Charles of Anjou and the Knights of Malta, bishops and Masons in the family. They were succeeded by the Simonetti family who extended the building (hence the name) which also had cardinals, scholars and Masons in its own entourage. In the caves, beside the countless Knights Templar crosses embedded in the sandstone, there is a symbol of great symbolic importance, often used in Template buildings, called the “triple wall”. It is also called "Labyrinth" and has a deep and esoteric ritual meaning because it represents the path of the initiate to the center up to the revelation.

Cave Simonetti

It was seen as a symbol of Atlantis, the Solomon's Temple, the heavenly Jerusalem with twelve gates, three on each side in this case. It might also be an inverted pyramid where you start the course from the four sides to reach a summit, it is a symbol of the earth (square) that takes you through a series of steps up to heaven (summit). It recalls the number three (dear to the Templar) and the three degrees of initiation. Not by chance you can find it under the old chess, the game that represents for excellence the exact battle between good and evil. There is also another particular sacred image, the two-tailed mermaid which, as well, is full of symbolism and often depicted in temple buildings. It is also called "Melusina", a ancient fairy whose family, claimed to be descended from Jesus (Plantagenet and Merovingian) and to who Templar said to came from, an ancient divinity related to the Mother Goddess opposite to the Mother Earth being it linked to water. It 'a very ancient goddess of whom we know little but she compensates with the element of water the soil of Mother Earth. The old sirens were women with tails instead of legs.

Cave Campana
The galleries of the Palace Campana, for the countless figures carved in the sandstone up to today without a precise meaning and connection, are among the most mysterious places in Italy.
Who wanted them and why is still unknown, although if there are different point of view on this. Archaeologist M. Pincherle claims that it dates back to the Gothic war during which Osimo suffered two assaults that forced its people to take refuge underground (538-544 AD). Others, such as R. Boscolo considers the fact that they had been made by people even more anciently, Celtic, and that they had used the language of the Druids.
G. Petronilli, director of M.I.R. (Mystery Investigation and Research) would assume that it belonged to Rosacroce. To support this hypothesis there is the fact that during the restoration of Palace Campana participated a great Mason, Andrea Vici, architect of the "Bavarian enlightened ", a group that favored to decorate with allegorical motives the places where Masonic meetings were held.

Cave Campana

The images that we find in succession are really so many and mysterious. Many assumptions were made by experts who would give detailed interpretations of the same.
I will briefly enumerate some of the figures reporting the writing from the book “ I tarocchi di pietra del Palazzo Campana di Osimo” by F. Copparo and F. Filippetti who refer to the Cesare Ripa dated 1593.
In order meet the following figures:

a cock two figures, one with the hand crossed and one which holds a small tree. woman with helmet who in her left hand holds comucopia and in her right hand a scorpion a lion snakes female figure with a lance in the hand female figure with bow and arrows with at the the feet a head and a lizard female figure with a branch in the hand a man with an axa woman with wings at humeri and at feet a young man with wings, an eagle crest ready to shoot arrows a woman with a strange hat two Venus in the shieldsa strong man and a womana character wanderinga man who opens a lion mouth a kneeling woman a bull a superb woman Bacchus a group of people done by three women, a man and a child in a scene of deer huntinga woman with two heads a naked woman on a cart pulled by two fauns a man dressed in goatskin with two-tailed snakes a satyr playing the flute a woman with long hair with the hand toward the top with the index stretched out and the right hand open toward the bottom a human image with two heads a knight who plays a horn an elephant with on its top a square tower a bearded man Mercury with a woman with long hair A Roman soldier

A man wearing a grey cap

At first sight what leaks out from all these figures is an unmistakable reference to worship of pagan gods (Mitra, Bacchus e Dionysus).
These imagines, as they are arranged and due to their strange nature, could almost remember the Egyptian Book of the Death because they seem almost to represent characters to be met in a precise path.
There are no inscriptions but only imagines, strange men and women to be meet, to face (as in the Book of Death) and to overcome the puzzles before to arrive at the final light, to the prize of knowledge and immortality. To you the tests and their overcoming.
I have reported only the bas-relief, for further information on a possible reading you can refer to the book “I tarocchi di pietra del Palazzo Campana di Osimo” by F.Copparo e F.Filippetti or "Le Grotte I Cavalieri Le Logge" by R. Mosca and A. Renna - Osimo Publisher that can be ordered on the website "Osimo sotterranea"

Cave RiccioniParticularly fascinating are the caves of Palace Riccioni where a tunnel especially flows in a room where before its entrance there is a big cross with eight arms

Cave Riccioni

This cave is made up by a plant shaped in a five-pointed star, where on each of the points there is a seat carved in the tuff. The initiated seating there could hear but not see each other. This place was for surely used for ritual purposes and this would explain its strange shape.

Cave MatteottiAnother very interesting room, one of the most mysterious one in the Osimo underground, is the so called “Prohibited cave”. It is under Largo Matteotti and it has a circular plant with a column in the middle and some cavity all along its circumference.

Cave Matteotti

It look like to an ancient roman mitral where in the past were done the ritual dedicated to the God Mitra, ancient Persian divinity. The plant has the shape of a horse with the ceiling as a cross and five cavities on the top of a seat that run along its circumference. The feeling is to enter in a place that is solemn, clean but mainly mysterious. There is also a big mask with representing a woman head. This kind of room is rare but not unique in Italy which is an important thing because the fact to be repeated in other places of templar membership confirms the hypothesis that it had a particular esoteric and mystic function. Another Mitral room can be found in fact in the underground of Santa Croce di Sassoferrato and at Bardolini in the templar church of Saint Giusto.

(c) Pictures by Marco Scataglini/Mariano Galliani
This article has been taken from the book:
"Le Grotte I Cavalieri Le Logge"
by R. Mosca e A. Renna
Osimo Publisher
order by website "Osimo sotterranea"